


Dream Hard

by Lenticular



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, POV First Person, noir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 18:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenticular/pseuds/Lenticular
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isn't every day a man in a mask walks into your life and changes it forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cellar

**Author's Note:**

> Partial credit for this goes to my partner, who came up with much of what I put in here, up to and including Lu Ten's name, profession and how the story evolved.
> 
> The titles, both the main one and the chapter titles come from various songs by the Norwegian band Kaizers Orchestra whose musical themes tend to be, very fittingly, about crime, betrayal and revenge.
> 
> In spite of this, the theme tune of this - aside from straight-up noir jazz - would be Marlango's 'Shake the Moon'.

"Are you happy with this?"

I glanced at her, the run-down woman who asked such a blasphemous question of me. Her make-up was caked, her hair stringy, a stinking pipe hanging from her perpetually morose lips; she came here for a bit of excitement and the sight of shirtless men, something to distract her from a dull life of booze and blandly watching gauges at whatever factory she'd found a job at. I knew the type. "It's a living," I said and turned away from her.

I escaped the bubble of smoke and depression that surrounded the hastily cobbled-together bar, and the noise of the rest of the room hit me like a freight-train. Cheers, jeers, pleading from the chronic gamblers, sobs from the lost souls, grunts from the three make-shift rings set up around the dingy place.

Unlicensed fighting. Oh, yes, it was good money; better than my uneducated ass could get anywhere else, and certainly better than the licensed rap. Nobody paid to see non-benders fight by the rules when Pro-Bending was going hard and strong uptown. Seeing non-benders beat the unholy snot out of each other, however, with none of the protections rules provided, well, hell, the Triple Threat Triad had jumped into that market the second it scented a business opportunity, and whatever else they were, they weren't stingy. Winning meant good, hard cash; meant food on the table.

My turn was coming up again. I was already going to have an impressive foot-shaped bruise on my hip come morning, and I wasn’t much up for adding more, but the night’s winning pool was too good to turn down.

“Hey.” I ignored it, kept walking. A hand grabbed my elbow hard. “Hey, asshole, I’m talking to you!”

The man was slurring, and when I yanked my arm free, he stumbled. Great. At least it wouldn’t take much to knock him out if he got too pushy.

“You Lu Ten, right?” he drawled clumsily. He was wearing too much blue to be anything but a waterbender, but it was too cheap for him to be a Triad.

“Why’re you asking questions when you obviously know the answer?” I said, tried to dismiss him, turning to go on my way.

He grabbed my arm again, the shit, and spoke in what he must have considered a discrete voice, “You’re goin’ up against Wen next,” he told me, as if I didn’t know. Then he felt the need to add, “S’my buddy! Wen!”

“I’ll tell him hello,” I said. Another yank on my arm informed me that that wasn’t enough for him.

“Hey, fucker!” he tried to growl. It came out burbling. “I said, he’s my buddy, you need to fuckin’ fall in line!”

Bad idea. Didn’t matter how drunk he was, if the Triad heard him trying, however stupidly and clumsily, to fix a fight, he was going to end up bleeding out in a gutter. Like hell was I getting caught up in that. I shoved him and got my arm free, then disappeared into the crowd. I couldn’t give half a shit about Wen and his buddies, I had rent to pay.

“Where the fuck were you? Fight’s about to start!” my manager - manager; hah. ‘Pimp’ might come closer, the way he took percentages - snapped, straightening his cuffs like they weren’t filthy to begin with. Nervous habit of his, and he scowled when I stared. “Get the hell in the ring, man; don’t keep ‘em waiting all night.”

I grunted, ignored him, ducked under the stained rope. Nonbending brother to an earthbending Triad, Jiro was the born and bred asshole, but he had the connections. I was willing to put up with a lot for that.

And there, across the ring, looking even less savoury because I’d met his asshole friend, was Wen. Yeah, I could pulverise him and walk away feeling good. Like hell was some drunk waterbender going to keep me from moving through this guy to the final fight.

I cracked my knuckles, shook my shoulders loose and kicked my feet. Wen was going down.

◄♦►

They weren’t heavy none, just scraps of paper, but I thought I could feel the weight of the yuan-notes in my pocket none the less.

Jiro had taken his cut, yes he had, but there was still more than enough for me to make it through the next couple of weeks if I didn’t get extravagant. Enough for the bruises to vanish, and for the scrapes to all but disappear. Still, the last fight of the night had been vicious, and I had an inkling the bandaged scrape over my jaw was going to leave a small scar. Well, hell, add it to the collection.

Wen and his asshole friend were long gone from my mind by the time I made my way home. It was a long, dingy walk in dark streets that would look grimy and wet, even if it hadn’t been raining. The Triads, in their eternal pragmatism, saw to it that the underground fights were staged in the south district, in among the factories and warehouses. Less chance of cops, and those that did show their faces tended to be pretty open to a quick bribe. It was a great arrangement for not getting arrested.

It was a shit arrangement for getting home, though.

No trams ran through here this time of night. Why would they? All the workers had gone home or to the bars; anyone here after hours were bound to be illicit. Best case, I hiked my ass to the outskirts of Dragon Flats, caught a late-night tram the seven blocks to my own apartment.

I set to walking briskly, intending to do just that. If I hurried, I could grab a wrap from Ume’s before she closed up for the night. One of the better places around my home; for one thing, she tended to keep the grease on the inside of her wraps.

I’d passed two warehouses and was making my way past the endless array of Satomobile factories when I finally noticed that the weird noise was not, in fact, the echo of my own steps. I was being followed. Oh, yes; definitely feeling those yuan-notes now.

I glanced around. No easy chances for a graceful exit. Fuck, there were several people following me too. I was not about to lose my hard-earned cash. There was little enough as it was.

I was sore, I was tired and I was decidedly not in the mood for this, but there wasn’t any choice I could see.

I stopped up hard. Behind me the footsteps shuffled on for a few seconds then stopped as well. No whispers, nothing; just anticipation. I turned on my heel and saw a ragtag little gang that I could only guess, going from their brightly coloured and sharply divided clothing, were benders and, sure enough, wobbling slightly and looking mightily pissed off, was Wen’s asshole friend.

Shit. I’d have prefered a regular old mugging.

“Can I help you?” I said. By the way they bristled, I probably hadn’t sounded as scared as they wanted me to.

“Hey, fucker,” said Wen’s asshole friend, he of endless wit, “remember me?”

“You’re a hard man to forget,” I said. “Unfortunately.”

It didn’t get me a face full of rank water out of Yue Bay, but it did earn me a burst of flame from one of the more sober compatriots. A weak one, and I’d been on the receiving end of enough firebenders to know; I barely had to move back but a few steps to avoid getting singed. Definitely Triad rejects, these.

“That money is ours!” said one of them, possessed by the same astounding wit as his waterbender companion.

“Fuck you,” said I, “I won ‘em. They’re mine.”

They were on me in the next heartbeat, flames and rocks and water jetting at me, but I easily ducked and rolled out of the way. Sure, there are benders you don’t want to take on; the cops for one thing. Well-trained ones, the ones that know how to use their bending to the best of their advantage.

And then there were these assholes.

One day, one of them sets the curtains on fire or freeze their sister’s hand to the wall, and then they glean what they can from harried parents or whichever old bender is hanging around and is willing to at least teach the little fuckers control, and the next minute they think they’re fucking Sozin or something.

Well, I’m no bender, but I knew how to fight, and the slowest newbie in the ring still hit faster than than any one of them. Dodging, twisting, it was practically a work-out once I started fighting back.

A fist to the gut stopped the constant rain of small rocks from the mousy earthbender; a roundhouse kick to the face both ended one of the sputtering flames from one firebender, and ended that straight nose he had going for him.

Earthbender out, wheezing against a wall. One firebender down, one more and two waterbenders to go.

I ducked a water-whip and went for the second firebender. She had the oomph the other one lacked, and the way she was throwing her shit around, she was more liable to get me killed.

A clumsy blast of foul-smelling water from Wen’s asshole friend hit me in the chest and knocked me back, throwing me off balance for long enough for them to start pushing me back, and I only realised they’d herded me into an alley when my already dark surroundings grew darker.

Well, shit.

Right, I’d recovered from worse in the ring, and they still relied far too much on bending, and not enough on speed.

Dodging another burst of flames, I went after her again only to find myself blocked by more water-whips. The waterbender, the sober one, was doing his level best to keep me on the defensive, and that shit smarted more than water had any right to.

Fine, he could go first then. I turned to face him, falling back to find the best way around those soaring lashes of water.

Stupid.

Fucking.

Move.

I realised what I’d walked into when I saw blue light gathering out of the corner of my eye. I should have kept on the firebender, kept her in motion, kept her occupied, but how often do you really meet lightningbenders outside of the Triad or the Agni Kais?

I spun on my heel just in time to take a bolt of lightning to the face.

The world disappeared in bright light and thunder, and my body froze in a tense arch, bolted to the ground as if someone had set a nail gun to my foot. I may have screamed. I’m not sure.

A second later - an endless, yawning, eternal second - the light and the pain stopped, and I collapsed on the ground limply. Their voices, coming from far off, were triumphant, the absolute fuckers. They gathered around me, the mousy earthbender limping into the alley, trailed by a liquid shape that shouldn’t be there.

The last thing I saw before my vision blacked out was a white, inhuman face peering out from the shadows, looming behind the five.

The last thing I heard, a split-second later, was a pained gasp and a fearful cry. Then there was only soothing darkness.


	2. My Favourite Gentleman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurred to me that "titles based on songs by Kaizers Orchestra" does not quite cover it, so I'll be more precise. The title comes from Drøm Hardt which means, funny enough, Dream Hard. The chapter one title was, in a round about way, from Resistansen, the lyrics of which describe Marcello's cellar, the walls of which are, "closely hung with pictures, of people who have gone down, but are never seen again," and where there's, "Russian Roulette every Friday [...] if you can't go the distance, then you can't join the Resistance."
> 
> The title for this chapter is from Dr. Mowinckel, where the eponymous doctor is, "the only one who knows what's happening, he's my favourite gentleman."

I woke up to the smell of piss and garbage. Still in the alley, then, except something was tugging at me. I cracked open an eye, not relishing the idea in the first place, and saw that unsettling face again, perched on a figure swaddled in dark clothes and a ratty coat. It turned its empty eyes towards me and I realised, dimly, _a mask_. It was so starkly in contrast to the rest of the figure, cool, clean porcelain, like something off a stage.

"You're awake," he said - definitely a he; no mistaking that - in a voice made of gravel and power. "I patched up your wounds as best I could, but you should probably see a healer, just to be safe."

"You kidding?" I demanded. I tried to sound gruff, but my breath hadn't entirely returned, so I wheezed it. "I've taken worse than that in the ring."

"I'm sure," he said shortly, and I got the strangest feeling that he found my strained machismo disappointing. He slipped an arm around my shoulders, helped me to sit, then reached into his coat.

I tensed, couldn't help it. A lifetime in the slums of Republic City made you wary in the best circumstances, let alone when you're sore, dizzy and in the company of a strange man wearing a fucking theatre mask.

It was almost comical, the surprise I felt at the wad of yuan-notes stuck into my hand.

"They stole them before I could stop them," he said, and completely ignored my double-take at this new information. Granted, the arm curved around my back was strong, but there wasn't a scratch on him. "You can count it if you want, but I assure you, it's all there."

Who the hell talks like that? I took the notes, staring at him like he was a spirit crawled out of the sewer. For all I knew, with that mask in place, he just as well could have been.

The second the bills left his hand, he withdrew, stood with a fluid sort of grace that made my mouth go dry, and turned to go. I scrambled to my feet faster than I should have, had to slam a hand to the grimy wall just to stay standing. "Hey, wait!"

He didn't, all but floating towards the mouth of the alley; fuck, the way he _moved_.

"C'mon, you just saved my life; at least let me buy you dinner!"

That finally stopped him, and the way I saw him shift, clutching at his stomach beneath the ratty coat, convinced me he at least wasn't a spirit. The man was starving; didn't get more human than that. Pushing away from the wall, biting down a hiss at bruises being stretched, I jogged to his side, tried to catch a hint of his eyes. "I'm Lu Ten."

"I know. I saw you fight."

Flattering. "I didn't catch your name."

"I didn't give it."

I was too sore, too tired and too fucking cynical to give in to that, and I stayed where I was, staring expectantly at that ghostly porcelain face.

He glanced at me, a hint of light in the shadows, and sighed. "Amon," he said finally.

That word felt better than smearing a man's nose across his face, a tiny victory that actually mattered. I jerked my head and started walking. "Come on; I know just the place."

After a moment, out of the corner of my eye, I caught him following silently.

◄♦►

I returned to our greasy table with two bowls of even greasier dumplings, and I was honestly surprised to find him still there. I set a bowl down in front of him, slid into my own seat. "So, you new in town?"

He looked up. I had hoped the light of the diner would let me catch the colour of his eyes, the shape of them, but it was a no-go. The mask hid everything but shades within even darker shadows.

"Just arrived today," he said. His voice should've been lost in the din of late-evening chatter, but it cut through the air like electricity, sparking in my ears,

"Welcome," I said and pretended to be polite. Better that than grimly sarcastic.

He inclined his head minutely and pinched a dumpling between his chopsticks. I had hoped, with the offer of food, that the mask would go, but my hopes were dashed. He simply tilted up the edge of the mask and, unerringly, disappeared the dumpling behind it.

Hell of a lot of disappointed hopes tonight.

Dammit.

"You got a place to stay yet?" I said. "'cause I've got a couch. Not much, but I can let you crash there for the night."

"You're very kind," he said.

He somehow managed to wolf down the dumplings with that same uncanny grace. I realised I was staring, forced myself to look away, looked at those dark, slim fingers cradling the chops. "You Water Tribe?" I found myself asking.

He froze in mid motion, then jerked his head in a sharp no.

"Where are you from, then?"

"Earlier today, from the docks," he said, and his voice carried a warning. I've never been much good with warnings, though.

"And before that?" I prodded, leaning comfortably over my own bowl, closer to this curious presence. His hair, I couldn't help myself noticing, was thick and dark and, though the high collar of his coat could hide more, it seemed short-cropped from where I was sitting. A hack-job, probably done in a rush, looked recent. He'd likely gotten it done on whatever ship he'd arrived in.

"Around," he said, and looked up at me from under the deep shades of his mask. The warning was gone, replaced by puzzled bemusement.

"You're not going to tell me anything about yourself?"

"I told you my name."

"Don't tell me that's your real name."

Amon quirked his head minutely; I imagined I could almost see a smile through the mask's perpetually frozen smirk. "Why do you want to know?"

"Strange man in a mask saves my life," I said, "patches me up, doesn't steal my money. Shit, yeah, can't imagine why I'm curious."

"Your dumplings are getting cold," he said, and I could definitely hear a smile in his voice.

"I've eaten worse," I said, but I still managed to down one, my eyes fixed on this, my mysterious saviour.

I imagined lips curling behind the mask, felt my skin tighten queerly at the thought.

"I can imagine," he said, still amused.

I had nothing to say to that, so we sat in silence, eating our dumplings. Me picking at them, him expertly slipping them away under his mask. That mask...

I looked up, studied the spooky thing in detail. No wonder I thought he might have been a spirit at first; the porcelain was almost translucent and, in the gloom of the alley, had appeared unnaturally white. Now, in the light, I could see the small marks and scuffs, the hints of dirt in the creases along the sculpted nose, the minute crack running up the forehead from one of the eye-holes.

I knew it was a bad idea, but I still found myself asking, "What's with the mask?"

He didn't move in any way; his head was still bowed towards his bowl, his shoulders still hunched up defensively, one arm resting on the table, the other raised to hold the chops. Even so, I could feel that amusement I'd managed to provoke slip away, disappearing.

"Scars," he finally said to his remaining dumpling. And that, it seemed, would be that.

I dropped it, as surprised by myself as anyone. I'd never much been one for letting something strange go once it caught my fancy, but there I was, faced with a masked man, a single-word answer and not a damn shred of usable information about him, and I couldn't bringing myself to pry.

The last dumpling vanished, and those elegant fingers unhooked from around the chops, pushing the bowl away.

I swallowed heavily, poked at what remained in my own bowl. "So, this your first time in the Big Cabbage?"

For a moment, I didn't think he'd answer, but then, "Yes. It was the right place."

I looked up, eyebrows arched. "For what?"

Once more, I got the distinct feeling that he was smiling behind that mask, but all I got for sure was a small shrug, and then his attention wandered, taking in the diner for the first time. His hands folded at the edge of the table, one cradled palm-up in the other.

"Yeah, sorry about this joint," I found myself saying. "This time of night, it's the only place open that serves food that doesn't come in a bottle."

"It's fine," he said. "It's perfect, honestly."

"Yeah? Perfect for what?" I looked around, trying to see if anything could possibly classify as 'perfect'. I suppose the radio could count; brand-spanking new and shining in the corner, warbling off late-night music. Stolen, probably. And the only thing not covered in a thin layer of grease and nicotine.

"Watching," Amon said. "Just watching."

I looked back at him and realised that, yes, he really was taking in everything about the place. The patrons, the bored woman behind the counter, the flickering lights and the shiny radio. The dingy, low-class air, the poverty and resigned desperation that every single person in the place exuded. The kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food, and wasn't going to get filled anyway.

I felt ashamed suddenly, and I wasn't sure why; there was nothing in his behaviour that spoke of disgust, not the slightest inkling. Instead his voice was filled with curiosity and quiet melancholy. Maybe that was why. This strange man who seemed so quietly haunted already, I didn't want him here, with everyone else and their burdens on display. I threw down my chops. "What say we head to my place? I'll make you a cup of tea, put down some sheets on the couch."

His eyes returned to me; I tried to pretend my breath didn't catch. "Ah, yes. Of course. Thank you for your generosity, and for your hospitality."

"Don't mention it," I said and meant it. I got to my feet, and he followed.


	3. All or Nothing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title for this chapter comes from Mann Mot Mann (Man Against Man), which is... a song about sex. Gay sex, even, "you can go man against man, it's warmly recommended". The specific words are from the refrain, "You are mine, you are mine; you can have all or nothing."
> 
> And the story gets its M rating. This is as graphic as I wrote it, because I wanted to be able to post it on sites that doesn't allow straight up smut, but part of me is tempted to write out the full scene.
> 
> The eagle-eyed among you, remembering that this is written in as a deliberate noir style as I can manage, will notice that I cast Amon in the traditional femme fatale role. Go on, have a chuckle.

The noise the match made when I scratched it across the strip was loud in my silent apartment. Amon made no noise at all unless he chose to; it was uncanny. I lit my small alcohol stove, reached for the covered barrel of water - running water? In this dump? The prize money weren't that good. - and filled the kettle, keeping an eye on the shadowy form of my guest all the while. He shrugged out of his coat, the tattered fabric sliding off sinuously rolling shoulders. I licked my lips, focused on the stove before I burned myself. "Sorry about the lighting," I said. "They've been talking about putting in electricity for years now, nothing ever happens. Cut off the gas around the same time. Hope the lantern will do."

"The lantern's fine," Amon said and turned to me, mask very white. As if the meagre light flocked to reflect off it. "I suppose that's the couch you offered?"

I tried to ignore that the couch in question was ripping at the seams and lumpy as hell, finding a pair of mismatched cups. One of them even looked like it had once been part of a fancier set; I reserved that one for my guest. "I know it's not much-"

"It's perfect," he cut me off. He didn't raise his voice, but it still stopped me cold, crawling up my spine.

The kettle set to boiling, I faced him properly, leaning on the wall. He'd gone back to his slow, careful consideration of the moldy hellhole that was my home. I had it to myself; around here, that was a luxury.

With his coat off, I could see the tight-fitted black clothes he wore underneath; they were nothing unusual, but they weren't hand-me-downs either. I wondered if it were those or the coat he'd stolen, if it was the rags or the goods he was trying to hide.

I never even considered that he could have bought either legally.

The black fabric - it didn't look rich enough to be silk, but it slinked all the same - clung to his limbs, gave me a first-row view of how muscles shifted and tensed beneath it as he moved.

The bubbling of the water snapped me out of my reverie, and I put the tea to steeping before moving both the pot and the two cups to the small table, falling into one of the chairs. "Have a seat. The tea'll be a minute."

"Thank you," he said and slid into the other chair like something made out of water.

I licked my lips, stayed silent, watching the steam curl from the mouth of the teapot. Rather that than being caught staring.

The silence was tense, though admittedly mostly on my part. Amon looked as relaxed as anything, sitting in that rickety old chair as if it was a throne, waiting for his tea. The way he looked, the way he affected me, I couldn't help but feel ashamed that the tea wasn't steeping faster. I nearly knocked the pot over when I finally reached to pour his cup. "D'you need something? I can borrow some honey from the neighbour if-"

"No, that's fine."

Fine. Good. I poured for us both, pushing the fancier cup towards him; tried not to stare at the way his fingers curled lightly around the porcelain when he lifted it.

Air whistled through the mouth of the mask as he blew on his tea, and he reached up, tilted it back, took a good, healthy sip in one go.

That had to burn all the way down. Not that he seemed affected. I stared down at my own tea. "So, Republic City, huh?"

"I came to this city for a reason," he said, turning the cup in his hands.

"Everybody coming here does," I said. "Money, usually; something to send back home."

"Did you?"

I laughed without humour, a short and dry bark. "I was born here. War's long over, but a hundred years stick. This is the only city I know of where a Water Tribeswoman and a Fire Nation man can settle down and marry, and people won't start shit over it, so that's what my parents did."

He watched me silently, the holes of his mask very dark in the gloom. I flattered myself that I caught a flash of light in there. Still, he barely moved.

"What?" I demanded, harsh.

"I'm waiting for the rest of that story," he said.

Damn that mask and all it hid; I could use one myself right about now. My hand tightened around my mug; I tried to focus on the heat of it. "My mom and dad died," I said. "An accident. I was three. Dad had a family-pension deal, it'd be paid out to whoever looked after me, but only if they were in the city.

"My gram never liked that my mother married a boy from the Fire Nation; she'd seen half her family killed by 'em during the Siege of Zhao. Never forgave them. But the money was good, even if it came with a brat half fire, half water, so she came and became my guardian."

I stopped, didn't know where to go from there. Hell, didn't know why I told this, something I'd never spilled before, to this man I didn't truly know.

"It was not," he said mildly, "a happy arrangement, I presume."

Who in the fuck talks like that? I wanted to laugh, I wanted to hit him, I wanted to lay my head on the table and sleep. "Happy enough when the monthly payments covered the booze," I said. "Not so happy later in the month. Oh, no, she- she never touched me, never hit me, she just used words." Vile words, poisonous words, heard them in my darkest moments and felt, at the same time happy to frothing and guilty as hell that she was dead. "Just words. But they hurt all the same. You know?"

"Yes," he said, voice distant, and even my broken, cynical ass believed him. Believed him as sure as if the Avatar his own damn self (or her; hell if I knew. I didn't keep up) had declared it to me.

I drained my tea, wished it was stronger, and sounded gruff as I knew how when I said, "C'mon, tit for tat; that was my story, what's yours?"

He watched me; I couldn't see his eyes, but even with the mask half turned away, I felt them on me. "I came to this city," he said, "to make a difference."

"Oh, you're a dreamer. What difference are you gonna make, Sifu Amon?"

"You're not ready yet," he said.

I could feel the anger boiling up in me, the disappointment, the strange sense of betrayal.

He must have seen it on my face, because he went on, "Before I came here, I travelled. I saw the breadth and the width of the world, from Ba Sing Se, to the far cliffs of the Fire Nation. From Whale Tail island, to the Northern Air Temple. I have been to the Poles, Omashu and Kyoshi Island-"

"What's your point?" I said, sounding more tired than I was. Places I'd never been, places I'd never go.

"Before all that," he said, "I lost someone I loved. Before all that, I was scarred. That was twenty years ago."

I felt my brows draw together, absorbing this, the most information Amon had given me. "You've worn a mask ever since?"

His hand raised briefly, as if to reach for the pale porcelain, then settled on the table again. "Yes." He finally turned to face me properly again. "I'm sorry, I must be keeping you awake."

I snapped to, realised I'd been staring, and shot to my feet. "No, that- sorry. Yes, of course, you must be tired."

He stood as well, moving sedately, gracefully, and I had to force myself to turn away, grabbing our cups - mine empty, his half-full of quickly cooling tea - and moving them to the kitchen. I could at least pretend to be civilised.

I turned back, looked for my guest.

I had two windows in that dump, my bedroom facing brick wall, the other facing a danky street that made the bricks preferable by far. Amon stood before it now, silhouetted in harsh neon light. My mouth felt dry, my tongue thick. "I'll find you some blankets," I said, stammered. Hell, I'd rip the blankets off my own bed and offer them to him.

"I can just share yours," he said.

It took me a second, a heartbeat of thinking I'd just heard an idle thought in my own head, before I stopped up short and stared at him.

"Share," I said, finally. It was a question without a lilt.

"So you heard me," he said and moved away from the window, settling his body into deep shadow but for that white, white mask. It almost seemed to float, there in the darkness, and I took a hesitant step towards him.

I was never a man to indulge, and the options were barely there anyway. Spent old ladies in stained dresses, desperate young men with groping hands and baggy eyes, clots of white at the corners of their mouths. Everyone was looking for something, and it wasn't worth the trouble.

But Amon flowed from the shadows like midnight made solid, and his voice was electricity on my spine. I moved to the darkness and grabbed him, almost startled when he was actually there to hold. And his hands were everywhere, strong and clever and brushing over my skin before I realised my clothes were even being pushed aside.

Who was this damn man?

"What'll it take," I growled, my hands tightening on his biceps with bruising force, "to convince you to lose that mask?"

"You can't," he said, and then his hand was down my trousers, and the mask suddenly didn't seem so important any longer.

I shoved him against the wall - or he let me, or he fell back himself, I wasn't sure - and grazed my teeth over that teasing, almost-concealed jaw. Tasted sweat and smoke and the invisible stubble of a long day.

His hand twisted, and I strangled back a moan. "Your blankets," he said, his voice so low, so aching, that my skin tickled.

We stumbled through the doorway, onto my bed, and when he froze at the ominous creak of the frame, I just pushed him back, tore at his clothes. Those slim hands, stronger than they looked, clamped around my wrists and stopped me.

"Don't rush," he said, and his voice was a low growl that made my skin feel tight and hot. "We have all night."

I slowed down, let myself take my time. This wasn't a quick, desperate rut in some dark corner; this was my bed, my apartment and Amon was right, the night was ahead of us still. I sure as hell didn't have a job to get to in the morning.

It had been a while since I'd done this, but I wasn't a virgin and, as it turned out, neither was he; his hands were everywhere, brushing everything, reducing me to nothing so much as a boneless heap of gasping noises. Slim fingers between my legs, between my lips, around my wrist and guiding my hand, and spirits, he was warm and _tight_ , and when I slid home finally, the noise he made had me biting his shoulder to keep myself together.

Now more than ever, his voice - cracking with pleasure and pleading and, though I tried to keep myself back, fraying at the edge with pain - sent bolts of lightning up and down my spine, making my skin prickle all afresh.

His nails raking my back, his thighs tight on my hips, his head thrown back and his skin salty against my tongue. The choked moan he made each time I slammed myself home, the jerk of his body when I slid deep. He was overwhelming and intoxicating, and in a confused moment, I claimed those cold porcelain lips in a kiss.

The whimper he made in response to that, pained and frustrated as if, at that moment, he hated the mask even more than I did, made my spine lock into a tight arch, and I lost myself in white-hot oblivion, his arms locked around my shoulders.

After, we lay tangled with each other and the blankets, and I listened to him breathe and wondered at what point in my life I had decided sleeping with a masked man who hadn't even given me his real name was a good idea. I fell asleep deciding that I didn't care.

When I woke up the next morning, Amon was gone, and the bed was cold as the grave.


	4. Pictures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is, once again, from Resistansen, here concerning the wall full of pictures of those who didn't pass Marcello's test - a game of Russian Roulette.
> 
> The excerpt from the Equalist pamphlet is, of course, paraphrased from Marx and Engel's Communist Manifesto, a slightly jokey reference to the obvious parallels between the Equalists and the early Communist movement. I imagine it continues along the same lines, i.e. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggles between benders and nonbenders."

I don't know how I got up that morning. I washed, I dressed, I oozed my way out the door, all in a daze, and it wasn't until I was at the grocer's down the street, staring at the cheapest pack of dumplings that I actually realised I had left my apartment.

This wasn't my first one-night-stand. Hell, those were my usual; I was never much good at relationships.

And it sure as hell wasn't the first time I'd gone to sleep in a crowded bed and woken up alone, either.

So I had some trouble figuring out why it was bothering me this time. I'd never even seen Amon's face, never learned his real name, where he was from, what he did. It was the very essence of a quick fuck, and yet...

In fact, the whole thing felt oddly dreamlike, here in the light of day. I looked back on it, a disjointed mess of feelings and emotions and that frozen smirk, couldn't grasp that the whole thing had lasted barely more than three hours. Hell, the bruises I'd earned myself last night looked almost too healed, adding to the surreality of the whole situation. Part of me was tempted to write it off as just that: a dream.

Only I'd still been able to smell him on the sheets when I woke up, and my back ached deliciously to the tune of nails and desperate hands.

But shit, life wasn't a cheap romance novel, and I still needed to eat and live, even if I couldn't stop myself from a heavy disappointment that felt rather too much like pining. I shopped, I cooked, I listened to the radio, I read the paper and, when night came, I slept again. And the next day, and the day after, letting myself heal fully.

After a week, the pretense had ground me down enough that I decided 'living and healing' needed something stronger to go with it.

It was drizzling, which suited my mood just fine, though the rest of me could have done without. I pulled up my collar and put on a hat with something like a brim, moved into the streets, crowded here in the time between shifts. The day-shift was making their way home or to the same watering holes as me, night-shift was trudging to work.

Losing myself in the crowd felt good. Closed in, like; a pleasant claustrophobia. I could pretend I wasn't looking down alleys for a pale, ethereal mask.

I made my way along soaking cobblestones, ducked between heavy coats and under tattered umbrellas, around quick-fingered street-kids, watched the reflections of neon on wet ground. I don't know what way I took, or how I ended up in front of the bar, but when I looked up, green lights shining bright at eye-level informed me I stood in front of Zen's. 'Happy Hour 18-19'.

Good enough.

The complete lack of national emblems, not even the Earth Kingdom crest despite the green theme, informed me that I had found a bar catering mostly to non-benders.

Even better. A quick scuffle would take the tension out of me, and the chances of that was better in a bender bar, but I felt too fucking tired. I just wanted a glass of something sharp and a place to nurse it.

I pushed inside and was greeted with a low murmur, a radio narrating probending matches, and the smell of forty people's worth of wet coats.

I settled at the bar, waved down the tired-looking man tending it and, in short order, found myself with a glass and a half-empty bottle of what I was pretty sure was rice wine. Night officially made.

The evening bled into a nice background-buzz, filling my mind and ridding it of too much thinking. The low hum of conversation, the hyperactive voice in the radio narrating six idiots throwing shit at each other, the pleasant haze the wine put over everything...

I almost didn't hear it when a guy two empty chairs over growled, "Amon," in a voice that sounded like tarmac smelled.

I snapped to attention, albeit subtly. Someone watching might have noticed a tensing of my shoulders, a tilt of my head; I knew better than to show too obvious an interest in a joint like this. Besides, unusual name or not, had to be at least one other Amon in the city-

"Yeah, I seen 'im. That mask gave me the creeps."

-but they were still talking about _my_ Amon.

I threw back my head, downed my cup of wine, twisted in my seat to lean more comfortably against the bar and, entirely accidentally of course, turn my attention more firmly to the small cluster of four men speaking nearby.

"S'posed to. Keeps him safe."

"Nah, it's 'cause he ain't human."

Tarmac turned to the last speaker and rasped, "Don't be stupid, 'course he is. Yu's right; he wears it to hide his face. I figure he's someone important, can't let people know."

Something was sticking out of his pocket. It was all grubby white and red, but I recognised the stylised image of that mask, of that damned frozen smirk. I reminded myself to pour more wine, to not stare.

"See, I'm saying," Yu said, his voice bouncy and excited. He looked kind of like a fire ferret; 'bouncy' suited him. "The gangs ain't gonna like his kind of talk; gonna like it even less when they can't just smoke him." He leaned back, looked satisfied. "I'm tellin' ya, hotshot actor by day, Amon by night."

"Actor?" the critical one sputtered.

Yu shrugged, a little awkward. "Or somethin'! I'm just sayin'!"

"Either way," tarmac said, "he's speaking sense. He's gonna save us all, my man."

"If the gangs don't get him first."

Tarmac laughed harshly. "Yeah; if they don't get him first."

I'd heard enough. What the hell was Amon tangled up in? Gangs? Saving 'us'? Who the hell was 'us'?

_I came to this city to make a difference._

I didn't even know what I was doing when I stood. I thought of fleeing, thought of yanking tarmac around and demanding answers, thought of laughing hysterically. Some dreamers don't give up, apparently. Just meant the city would crush him harder, and I hated how that gutted me.

It shouldn't. I barely knew him, hadn't even seen his face.

But the image of Amon in the ever-tightening clutch of the gangs made me sick to my stomach.

Finally, I settled for the toilet, lurched towards it, bumped into tarmac on the way.

"Hey!"

"Sorry," I sputtered, and it must have sounded like the wine was coming back up, because they all shied back from me. I continued on my way, stumbling, half-running. When I reached to push open the door, I realised I was holding the scrap of paper, Amon's mask staring up at me.

There was a half-open window in the toilet, up under the ceiling. Even my half-sauced ass could make it up there, and I was out and hurrying down the street by the time the door swung closed behind me.

◄♦►

I expected to see him at my next fight, but there was no sign of him. I hadn't even realised, till that moment, how much I was counting on him to show. I mean, shit, I had questions.

Holy hell, did I have a lot of questions. The scrap of paper, a small folded pamphlet as it turned out, could only answer so much, and I didn't understand half of it. Bending privilege? Tyranny against 'our brethren'? The text beneath the mask, even, read like a barely comprehensible poem:

_Nonbenders of all nations, unite!_  
 _You have nothing to lose but your chains._  
 _You have the world to win._

I'd believe Amon wrote it; it read like he talked, formal and distant.

So yeah, I had plenty of questions for the man, but the hollow disappointment hadn't drowned in the confusion. I wanted more than answers from Amon.

I scanned the crowd after Jiro pushed me into the ring and saw nothing but flushed, unmasked faces, screaming for their money's worth of blood and bashing.

I lost that day, and endured Jiro screaming at me while I was still coming to after half a minute of black oblivion. I don't know what he was in the air about; he had a proper job during the day. I was the one who had to live off cheap noodles and get back in the ring before my bruises healed, just for an attempt to win my rent.

Besides, I had more important matters on my mind.

When I limped away from the latest hide-out, it wasn't for home. The pamphlet clutched in my hand had half of an address on the back; not a wise move for someone preaching against benders, but it was helpful as hell to me, so I didn't worry.

Someone had been bribed good and proper, and I didn't have to walk far to catch a tram. I paid the two coins it cost me in the early hours before the rush, slumped into a seat, watched the garbage on the street go past. My cheek hurt like a fucker, and I could just barely catch my reflection in the mud-stained window; a nice bruise stretched over my cheekbone.

Good in case I needed an intimidation factor, I supposed.

The place wasn't classy, but it was further on the way there than my usual circles. 'Zheng Wei's Printery and Dictation', written above the door by a sloppy hand trying to look good and only partway succeeding. I checked the address again; not going to lie, I felt on the disappointed side, but at least Amon wasn't as stupid as I'd first thought.

A quaint little bell tinkled as I pushed open the door and stepped inside, looking around. Dingy, dim and smelling of ink and dust, and I could see a monstrosity of a machine through a beaded curtain. Yup; it was a printery, all right.

I expected the owner to be a mousy sort, possibly with a long beard and an old-fashioned hat, probably looking like something out of Ba Sing Se with a name like Zheng Wei, so when a skinny guy with not a single damn hair on his head stepped out behind the counter, I couldn't help but feel a little tilted off balance. That might have been the beating I'd taken, though.

"Can I help you, sir?" Zheng Wei - I assumed - said. "Do you need a letter dictated?"

"I can read and write just fine," I said, a little defensively. I wasn't some fresh-off-the-boat immigrant who'd come to Republic City to escape farming drudgery. I'd grown up in the dump, received the best schooling charity could run in the slums. Enough to damn well write my own letters.

I held up the pamphlet, let him see it, then placed it on the counter. "I'm looking for some information about this here. More specifically, about the guy who commissioned it."

Zheng Wei had turned a fetching shade of greenish white for a moment, then fumbled through a nervous smile. "We take whatever job comes our way. Certainly, we claim no responsibility for any views expressed in the material printed here, as we are but a humble-"

"I'm not from any of the gangs," I said. Best stop him before he went into gear. "Not here to trash your shop, or you, buddy. I need to find the man who commissioned these, or at least where to look for him. Come on, help me out."

He measured me, wrung his ink-stained hands, looked at my clothes, my face - no doubt noting the pallor of my skin, the icy blue of my eyes, and drawing his conclusions, the fucker - the cut over my cheekbone. He lowered his voice, tapped a finger on the pamphlet. "If you're looking for Amon," he said, "you need to head to the factories, to the bars there. Or the ones down at the docks. He moves between them."

I frowned. That was too damn vague, but it looked like it was all I'd get. "Why?"

He looked at me as if he pitied my unending stupidity. I very carefully did not attempt to cave in his bald skull. "Do you think this sort of talk is popular with the gangs?" he said. "He's hard to find, yeah; but he's also alive."

◄♦►

He'd told me he'd come from the docks. I had a few friends down that way. Tram went directly there. Wasn't a hard decision on where to start.

It was late morning by the time I made my way between mountains of coiled ropes, gigantic dirty drums and small piles of gecko-gull shit. I was crashing, felt the dull tightness behind my eyes, but I wasn't giving up and stumbling home to my bed until I'd gotten at least a few answers.

I avoided the obvious benders' bars; I'd gleaned that much from the pamphlet. I passed by the garishly decorated blue and red buildings, ducking down the alleys between. Most of them were closing up, though I heard drunken shouting from one firebender bar that might once have been a song.

Besides, I had a destination in mind. It wasn't my kind of place; plenty of sailors and dock-workers came to the fights, it was good, cheap entertainment, but that didn't mean they stuck around.

Every now and again, though, lines blurred.

Samnang was a sailor turned fighter turned invalid. Nothing to do with me; I was still green in the circuit when a badly aimed punch sent him tumbling ass over head into a pile of scrap-metal. He needed twenty-six stitches and an amputation by the time someone dumped him outside Katara General.

I knew he had a bar down here, had been invited down whenever the old man dropped by the fights for nostalgia's sake, but I'd never bothered taking him up on it. If I was going to get unreserved information on Amon from anyone, however, he was either the source or the key to unlocking the sealed mouths in the rest of the bars.

The place was nearly barren when I pushed through the door. No surprises there; most of the crowd had made their drunken way back home or to their ship or, hell, someone else's ship. Shit happened when you put sailors in with drink.

Samnang balanced, one-legged, behind the bar as if he'd never needed that second leg in the first place, smudging dirt around the bar-top. A little down the way, an old woman was hunched over what was left of a glass of dark, muddy beer. Her face was nearly gone in a sea of wrinkles, and her thick coat - clutched around her as if she was freezing - was mottled with salt and sunlight. All right, not all the sailors were gone. I mentally dubbed her Kyoshi; she looked the type.

Catching sight of me, Samnang raised his free hand and greeted me with a hoarse, "Lu Ten!"

I jerked up my chin in greeting, moved to the bar.

"Can I pour you anythin'? 'bout time one of you boys dropped by here."

"No, thanks all the same," I said, felt something vaguely like guilt in the pit of my stomach. I hadn't come here to let him wax nostalgic about the great fights of his youth, but he seemed to be gunning that way. I decided to dash that hope before it grew too big. "I just came by to look for someone, figured you might be able to help."

The disappointment radiated from him for a moment, then disappeared with a shrug and grin that had to have seen its fair share of fists and brine. "She worth comin' down here for, boy?"

"He," I corrected and folded my arms on the bar. "He's difficult to get a hold of, let's say."

Sangnam's bushy eyebrows rose, his crooked lips pursed, and understanding dawned in his eyes. "Oh. That kinda lookin'. Someone in trouble with you?"

Yes, if not in the way Sangnam meant, so I said, "Nah, nothing like that. He's interesting, is all. I'd like to talk to him some. Name's Amon; wears a mask like this." By the time I'd rummaged through my pocket and pulled out the pamphlet, I realised that it hadn't been necessary; Sangnam had fallen still at the mention of Amon's name, and even Kyoshi was glaring at me through narrow, golden eyes.

"Ah," I said, "you've heard of him."

"Heard of 'im," Sangnam admitted grudgingly. "He circles the bars down here for a while, disappears for longer, then comes back. Always brings trouble, that one. Was somewhere near yesterday, weren't he?" He looked at Kyoshi.

She sneered - I had a suspicion she was trying to smile - and said, "Aye. Was drinkin' down at the Lone Soldier when he showed up. Whole place in an uproar with his fancy yammerin'."

I turned to face her, more eager than I'd meant to be. "What did he say?"

"Dunno," she said and shrugged. "Left. Ain't my business none, all this fuckin' benders and nonbenders. I don' bend shit, never stopped me workin' a decent load."

"I've heard 'im a few times," Sangnam said. "Jao's place, I think he likes comin' there on account of Jao bein' all drums and bluster himself. Peagrapes in a pod, like." I looked back at him, silent, expectant, perhaps a little angry without knowing why. He fidgeted. "He was goin' on, is all, about how benders run the city, legal and ill, and yeah, all right, man's got a point, I admit it. The council, the gangs, all of it. But that ain't no call to go out there, mess up decent people's drinking with all his grand jawin'."

"Well," I found myself saying, "someone has to. Nobody'd pay attention otherwise."

"Oh, he's got plenty of attention," Kyoshi said, stiff fingers curling around her mug. "Got a right little gang of his own, don't he? Followin' him around, talkin' big when he ain't. Probably room for you too, boy; you look achin' to join up."

I couldn't even pretend she was wrong, and she knew it, flashing what few teeth she had left at me.

I sneered, turned away, tried to ignore her knowing little smirk. "D'you know where I can find him?" I asked Sangnam instead.

He shrugged. "No clue. Sorry, Lu Ten; he keeps his own schedule, that one. As predictable as the sea."


	5. The Resistance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter and, yet again, the chapter title derives from Resistansen, only this time the name of the song itself. I suppose now is as good a time as any to quote the lyrics from Drøm Hardt that made it the title for this fic, "Tomorrow you must take the final steps, and I understand if you ask: was this life? Was this all?"
> 
> Where, if anywhere, will I go from here? I'm not sure. I don't even know if there's any interest in a continuation. But this has been fun to write, and I didn't work half as much of my fascination with the possible politics and social movement that is Equalism into it as I might have wanted to, so there is that.
> 
> Once more, the fic earns that M rating, by the way.

I'd almost given up when he finally showed up to one of my fights.

A month and a half had nearly passed, forty damn days of chasing a ghost in between trying to earn my keep with bruised ribs, but all I had found were the same stories I'd gotten from Sangnam and old Kyoshi.

He appeared at random. Disappeared for long stretches of time. Spoke in nonbender bars and, as of late, outside the factories, more out in the open and in danger the more followers he got. And that number, damn it all, was growing with each story I dusted up.

Amon was making waves in the city's underground, subtle but persistent. Wouldn't be long before someone tried to pick him off.

So I admit it, I was preoccupied when Jiro shoved me into the ring. The scrawny man in front of me had the glazed look of too many punches, or too much poison, and the jitter of someone willing to take a lot of beatings to come out on top.

Wasn't gonna be a pleasant fight.

I cracked my knuckles, all nicely wrapped up in a few strips of cotton, and got into my stance, waited for the ref's call to begin.

And there, in the corner of my eye, at the edge of a crowd, a white, white face, smirking like nothing human, distracted me.

The ref called, I snapped to too late and got a fist to the face, staggering back three steps.

Shit.

I brought myself back, slammed into a bony chest with my shoulder, drove the side of my hand into his stomach.

I was not losing this. I was not getting knocked out by a scrawny junkie and letting Amon slip away again. He was there, mask hovering at the edge of my vision, and I was going to fucking win this and be on him before he knew what hit him.

My opponent took a gasping step back, tried to get out of range. I didn't let him.

I hounded him, raining swift and shallow jabs at his head and gut. To his credit, he managed to block most of them.

Didn't matter. I was throwing him off balance.

He stumbled, danced awkwardly to stay upright, and I took the chance for a haymaker at his face.

He was quicker than I'd thought.

Ducking under my fist, he surged at me, driving a knobby elbow into my stomach, and on the edge of the crowd that white face was watching, smirking.

I wove back, dodged his follow-ups, regained my breath enough to get my head back in the game.

Fighting junkies is a goddamn chump's game, but I didn't have a choice.

Skinny would keep going till he physically couldn't any longer, so that's where I'd have to get him. Preferably fast, too; I had to see a man about a mask.

A quick spit, half saliva and half bile, and I threw myself into it. No easing up this time, and no big moves to let him duck away.

It had to be at about the third jab at his shoulder that I felt the adrenaline rush in earnest.

My heart pounded in my ears, drowned out the crowd, made me think of savagely beating drums. Bloodlust lurked at the edge of my vision.

It felt fucking good.

It was a rush, pounding him back.

It was a thrill when he kept coming back for more.

Every hit I landed, every one he missed, the way his head flew back, or he curled in on himself, it tasted like triumph in the back of my throat.

I would have played with him, almost kind of wanted to, but there was the mask in the corner of my eye.

He could barely stand, anyway.

I finished him off with a roundhouse kick to the side of the head. He fell and didn't get back up.

Good.

The noise of the crowd came back, hitting me like a wall, but I had only one thing in mind. I turned on my heel, marched towards that masked spectre, ignoring Jiro screaming behind me, demanding an answer to where the fuck I thought I was going.

Over the rope, shove aside two people who suddenly surged together as if to protect Amon, and I grabbed his arm hard. "Come with me," I ordered over the roar.

He didn't struggle, only let himself be dragged along as I elbowed through the masses. I knew where to go; a dingy little room, more of a closet really, where I'd been allowed to stash my spare clothes and other vitals. It had a door; that's what mattered.

I slammed that door behind us once we were in and shoved him against it, one hand clamped on his shoulder. Hell, part of me was probably afraid he'd vanish into thin air if I didn't hold onto him. "What the hell game are you playing?"

"Game?"

"I've heard about your little sermons," I spat, "I know what you're doing-"

"That's no game, Lu Ten." His voice was sharp, angry; I stopped short, staring at him. Waiting. He didn't disappoint. "I'm not the one fighting my brothers and sisters for the scraps thrown to me by my oppressors! You want to talk about games? Look outside!"

I let go of his shoulder, took a step back. His words made me feel more uncomfortable than I wanted to admit, for reasons I didn't even understand. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know perfectly well! Benders run this city, they run the police and they run the underworld. The only thing they can't run is people like you and me unless we let them, and you _are_. Is it worth it? Your dignity, your humanity?" He took a step towards me. I retreated, burned by the intensity of his shadowed eyes. "Being made to fight like animals for their entertainment; we're better than that! I told you I came to this city for a reason, and now you know what it is."

He calmed marginally, drew back again, but he was still nearly trembling with energy. "If you want to stay here, beg at the feet of the Triad, by all means, play your _games_. I have a higher cause."

"Fine," I spat. "okay, so, you're right; but that's the way things are! Your mask isn't spooky enough to change that."

"I don't need my mask. I need followers. I need you."

"Enough to ditch while I'm sleeping."

He was silent. The light was good enough for me to see his eyes were focused sharply on mine.

I shifted, crossed my arms defensively at the dawning understanding in that look. "Fuck you, I'm not sentimental, but a simple goodbye would've been-"

"I'm sorry," he cut me off, so quietly I shouldn't even have heard it, but it made my spine tingle and shut me up immediately. How did he do that? "I didn't realise you wanted me to stay. I didn't want to take advantage of your hospitality."

'Hospitality', he called it, and there wasn't the smallest fucking trace of irony in his voice. Who the hell was this man?

I looked away, couldn't meet those eyes that somehow burned with fervour, with naked honesty, despite the mask. "And where do I fit in?"

"Wherever you want," he said without hesitation. "Our movement could use a man like you."

"Your movement," I echoed, a little dully, pretended not to feel struck by the impersonality of it. "Bullshit. I'm not- I'm not you. I can't do the grand speeches, and I don't gather up followers or disciples or whatever the hell they are like flies."

He grabbed my arm - his hand was cooler than I remembered - and dragged me to the door, not to open it, but to let me hear the roar of the crowd beyond it. They were making noise to shake down the roof.

"You did that!" Amon told me in a low hiss. "That wasn't me, Lu Ten. You did that, and that's what you're capable of. I fight with words, yes, but you show them that the fight can be won! You kindle a thirst for justice, for equality!"

"Sounds more like cryin' out for blood," I stammered. The roar of it was humbling. Frightening. And Amon was so close that I could hear his quick breathing, hissing on the edges of the mask.

"Sometimes that's the same thing," he said. "If you went out there now and asked it of them, they would tear this city to the ground!"

The growl in his voice had me staring at him, something like realisation unravelling in the back of my mind. "Is that what you want?" I asked; couldn't help asking.

"The city is rotten from the bottom up," Amon said. "That's for the future, though. For now... for now there are benders who set you and me and others like us against each other for their own gain. You could teach them the fear they heap so carelessly upon us."

"Oh, not a revolution," I almost laughed, feeling breathless, shivery, "just a riot."

Slim fingers cradled my face, cupped my jaw, and his voice was a current through my mind as he said, "You would be glorious in both!"

I didn't know what to say, could only stare at him in mute wonder. The roar of the crowd became dull background noise, the flickering light became unbearably bright, I heard my blood rush in my ears, my heart pound in my chest.

The tension drew taut, like a string humming, and then snapped. I wanted him. I _wanted him_. I curled his collar in my fist, drew him close sharply.

"Yes...!" His voice hissed and prickled up my spine, and before I knew it, I had him against the wall, hands tugging at his coat, his belt.

It wasn't until cool air hit my stomach, my hips, that I realised he was returning the favour.

Then he was bared, and I was bared, and I pressed him more firmly into the wall with a jerk of my hips. His breath hitched, deep in his throat, in a way that had me grinding out, "Fuck." When his fingers, thin and warm and clever, snaked around us both, I slammed my palm into the wall at his hip, just to keep from tilting over.

It wasn't right, the things this man did to me. It wasn't fair.

I wanted to kiss him, taste him, wanted to claim his mouth and bite his lips till he begged, but there was only cool porcelain and the gasps of breath from behind it. When his hips rocked up against mine, and the friction made my knees weak, I buried my nose behind the corner of his jaw and inhaled him instead.

He smelled like metal; coppery. Like blood. Somehow it suited him.

His other hand was everywhere; curling in my tank top, trailing over the skin of my stomach and chest, drawing little paths of fire as if the mere touch stirred blood to the surface. Clenching at my shoulders, raking short nails over my bicep, fisting in my hair.

I made a sound, a low whine pressed against his throat. I could feel his pulse beneath my lips, hear the way his breath went from silent hiccups to low, gasping moans. It was the most arousing damn thing I'd ever heard.

My climax caught me by surprise, or I would have fought it off; I wanted to enjoy this for longer, the warm, desperate friction, the sound and smell and feel of Amon against me, the press of cool porcelain against my cheek and warm skin on my lips. But, insistent and sudden, the world faded into nothing but Amon, and I clung to the pleasure while I could.

I've never known the smell of copper to linger in my senses like it did then.

Amon's breath whistled out through his false porcelain mouth, teased over my ear, and I only noticed his hand was still wrapped around us when he pulled it away.

Spirits, I wanted to kiss him.

Instead I drew back, reached up, ran slightly trembling fingers through his hair. He might have smiled at me, behind the mask; couldn't be sure. I realised dimly I was staring. Part of me was sure, strangely convinced that he'd fade away if I took my eyes off him. I wondered if it was the mask that made him seem so ghostly to my mind.

It was starting to displace any curiosity about his real face in my thoughts. I didn't care.

He reached out, grabbed a discarded towel, looked at me. It took me a dazed moment to realise what he was asking, and I nodded sharply. "Of course, sorry, go ahead." He cleaned his soiled hand methodically. My throat closed up strangely at the sight of our combined spend, even as it was wiped away.

I couldn't stop myself, stepped close enough to brush my lips over his ear. The closest I could get to a proper kiss. I was rewarded with a short huff of breath; a gasp or a chuckle, I guessed.

I leaned back, caught those eyes (I thought I could make out a pale iris, but still no colour), and smiled. "A riot, huh?"

I imagined a grin spreading slowly on his face; his eyes glittered. "If you wouldn't mind terribly."

No answer; I didn't bother. Simply turned on my heel, doing up my pants, opened the door and stalked out. I was greeted with a roar of approval, and a stiffly smiling Jiro whose hand wrapped so tight around my wrist that I expected bruises in the morning.

"Where the fuck were you?" he hissed, his voice barely carrying through the din. "They're going crazy for your next fight."

I glanced back, saw Amon - once again collected, like a statue in the door - watching me, his mask bright like a beacon. "I'm not fighting again," I said.

Jiro stopped short, looked at me as if he suspected he was going mad. That he couldn't possibly have heard what he thought. "What?"

I freed my arm, drew back, raised my voice to roar above the crowd, "I'm not fighting again! I'm done!"

The place hushed in a wave, spreading out from me, till even the Triad mooks at their own little accounting table fell silent, just to see what had shut everyone else up. I took the chance, leapt onto a table and, looking out at all the faces turned to me, thin and scarred and starved and hungry and cunning and cruel and broken, all looking at me in expectation, in bloodthirsty admiration, and I let loose:

"I'm not ending my life like this; a fightin' dog for entertainment. How many of us are here 'cause we're not given any damn choice? How many of us flock to the gangs because they took everything else from us?"

I could see a wiry firebender get up from the accounting table, his face twisting. Tough shit.

"And if it ain't the Triad, it's the Monsoons or the Agnis! Well, I'm fucking done! I'm not going to fight people like me, normal people, when it's the benders like them stomping me into the shit!"

"Benders take everything and leaves us the dregs!" someone called. I recognised one of the people who'd drawn protectively in front of Amon, but there was a low mumble of agreement spreading in the crowd.

"You want my fucking sob story?" I demanded into the air and, to my honest surprise, there were a few called answers. So much for rhetorical questions, anyway. "I was born poor and grew up poor, because nobody's got any time for a halfbreed who can't even throw a spark or call down a drizzle. I worked the shit jobs, 'cause nobody needs someone who can fight when a boulder does the trick!" I threw out my arms, mocking as much as indignant, but they called out in sympathetic anger none the less.

"What was I supposed to do?" I snapped. "Spend my life selling newspapers, sweeping floors? 'cause that's all they'd give me! How many of you are in the dead-end because they'd rather have a firebender than a man who knows how to work with his hands, a waterbender rather'n a woman who knows her way around pipes?"

The crowd roared. That firebender was starting to look a tad bit nervous, and so was his compatriots.

"How many of you are they running a racket on? How many times did they steal half your earnings on payday, 'cause no one fucking stopped them? And do the cops help?"

"No!" someone called, as I'd figured they would. What surprised me was that more throats took up the word in echo.

"We're not important!" I cried, and I could feel bitter anger in the back of my throat. I wasn't an orator, I didn't gather up disciples like Amon, but the low, dismal undercurrent of my world was simmering to a boil, and the whole room was steaming. "We're not supposed to be strong, they know we won't defend ourselves, and the law sure ain't lifting a finger to do it for us! Well, you know something?" I looked dead at the Triads, straight in that firebender's wide, piss-yellow eyes, and spat, "There are more of us than there are of them. And they can't fight all of us."

Chaos erupted. The wanting, hungry, bitter faces surged up in anger and turned on the benders in the back of the room. I'd never seen a Triad - or an Agni, or a Monsoon - turn sheet-white with fear, but oh, it was the sweetest fucking sight of my life when I did.

I looked back over my shoulder.

Across the room, I imagined that the smirk on Amon's mask could almost be real, and in the roar of the crowd, the fear and the triumph, I saw the first, delicate seedling of a new world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end.
> 
> Like I said, despite what the notes may have given the impression of, this was written not to the soundtrack of Kaizers Orchestra, but to general noir-style jazz and Marlango's Shake the Moon. If, none the less, you are interested in KO, dear reader, I can only recommend them. And while you may come away with the impression that Resistansen is my favourite of their songs, it really did only get such heavy use because it fitted, being about, well, the resistance. My personal favourite would be Fra Sjåfør til Passasjer.
> 
> It concerns Dominique, a mafia enforcer, who fell from grace when he failed to protect Tony Fusciante, the son of Mr. Kaizer, the boss. Tony tried to go the distance in Marcello's cellar but, as these things happen, lost at Russian Roulette. The song is Dominique's sad lament as he's taken on the last ride of his life.
> 
> So I'll end this fanfic about the Lieutenant meeting Amon for the first time with Dominique's words:
> 
> "All I've done, I did for him."


End file.
